On Monday, May 5, musicians from across Metro Vancouver will harmonize while several music programs are threatened by the unrelenting logic of Vancouver School Board spreadsheets.
The Music Monday concert isn't quite Nero fiddling while Rome burns, but the proposed cuts certainly raise the ire and fire of Coalition for Music Education in B.C. president Christin Reardon MacLellan.
Band and strings programs at Vancouver elementary schools may be silenced next year if the VSB doesn't make broad changes to their budget.
"Any time something like this comes up it's action time for us," she says.
Other cities have contemplated toning down their music programs, but MacLellan says this is an extreme case.
"The difference is the way that VSB is just proposing to axe an entire program. There's nothing equitable about the way they're making those cuts," she says.
MacLellan is quick to point out the VSB does not consist of the town elders from Footloose, merely beleaguered public servants faced with a budget that allows only slightly more wiggle room than is provided by a starving anaconda.
"Of course they don't want to cut programs, in fact, if they had the opportunity they would expand them," MacLellan says. "But they're so strapped for funding from the provincial government that they're being forced to make these really difficult decisions."
The school board has pushed concerned music lovers to take their case to the provincial government, something that doesn't sit well with MacLellan.
"The school board has been very much: 'So sorry, not our problem. Go tell Christy Clark," she reports.
For MacLellan, going to the province is a delicate affair.
Aside from her duties with the CMEBC, MacLellan also works with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
"We're a non-partisan arts organization," she explains. "We will talk to the province, and we'll do that privately and not under the microscope of the VSB."
Music programs have faced the guillotine as often as insurrectionists during the French Revolution. The reason, according to MacLellan, is they are often perceived as extracurricular.
"Why is it seen as expendable? Because it's not reading, writing or arithmetic," MacLellan says. "Music gives children the opportunity to participate in something and to gain skills that they can't gain through any other subject."
Learning to play an instrument is an engrossing, visceral experience, MacLellan says.
"You're not just listening to it or talking about it or writing about it. You're doing music," she says. "You're producing something with other students that is bigger than yourself."
Several Seycove students will take part in something bigger than themselves at the May 5 Science World concert, slated to be webcast live.
Approximately 150 students from Lower Mainland schools will perform under VSO conductor Bramwell Tovey's baton.
"The entire nation joins together in song," MacLellan says of the event, which is also scheduled to feature astronaut Chris Hadfield.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Music Monday initially appears chaotic, according to MacLellan.
The band assembles for the first time only 20 minutes before their performance is set to begin. But with a few words from Tovey, "Boom, there they are, they're perfectly together."
The Seycove senior wind ensemble is planning to play "Inglesina" by Davide Delle Cese and "Shenandoah" by Frank Ticheli.
"They're part of something very public, they're part of something that supports pride in their school."
When working with her youth band, MacLellan says she asked the crowd why playing music was important to them.
A bass clarinet player from Seycove provided the winning answer, MacLellan reports.
"This one boy says, 'Well, it's easy. I'll never outgrow music. It's something I can do forever.'"
